Cheating Time
by ToastWeaselofDOOM
Summary: It's been five years—chronologically two hundred seventy-eight—since he's seen this version of her.


**Title:** Cheating Time  
><strong>Author:<strong> ToastWeaselofDOOM  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> Doctor Who  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Future!Doctor, River Song  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> Doctor/River  
><strong>Rating:<strong> K+  
><strong>Summary:<strong> It's been five years—chronologically two hundred seventy-eight—since he's seen this version of her.  
><strong>AN:** Based loosely on a Doctor/River roleplay I have going with my friend Kaedee. I took creative liberty with the apartment, but whatever. Details, details. Enjoy~!

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><p>It's been five years—chronologically two hundred seventy-eight—since he's seen this version of her. The version that drove him mad with her riddled words and <em>'Heel, Boy'<em>demeanor. Her beautiful blonde curls are tied back in a tight ponytail and her mouth is a perfect little 'o' of shock.

He grins easily, leaning casually on the doorframe to her apartment. "Hello, Sweetie." This regeneration always has been a bit cheeky, and he does love using her own catchphrase against her.

She merely blinks at him, as if not quite believing he is standing before her eyes. "D-Doctor. W-What are you—?"

"I've got a time machine?" he asks, stating the obvious. "Because I can?"

"You're breaking the rules!" River hisses quietly, glancing down the hallways as if she expects to see cracks in time opening to swallow them both up for this lapse. "You're not supposed to cross your own time stream!"

"I'm not nine hundred and nine anymore, River," he says patiently. "Rules are meant to be broken, anyway."

She stares at him a long moment then sighs and opens the door wider. "Come on in, then, you utterly _impossible _man."

"That's me!" The Doctor waltzes in past her and she closes the door with a snap. He looks around with interest; he's never been here before. It was the TARDIS that brought him here today. The room is small and roughly rectangular in shape. The Doctor's catches his reflection in the mirrored closet doors of the small foyer he's entered.

"Shoes," River tells him and the Doctor pauses to toe off his worn trainers. They clunk dully against the dull mahogany floor. The Doctor leaves them against the wall and walks into the main apartment space. To his immediate left there is a desk strewn with papers, and beyond that a small but brightly lit kitchen space. Bookcases line the far left wall, filled to overflowing with books of all sizes, titles, and ages. The back wall is mostly taken up by a large pane glass window with a wonderful view of the high-tech city below. The far half of the room is carpeted in soft cream, and a coffee table and comfortable-looking couch sit dead center of the room, facing the window. The right wall is bookshelves, also filled to bursting, that stop just short of two doors that the Doctor assumes lead to a bathroom and River's bedroom.

"Guess you never got around to getting your hair cut." River's voice jerks him out of his inspection of her living quarters.

"What?"

"Your hair," River says, gesturing at his head, where locks of his mousey brown hair peek out from under his tasseled winter hat. "Last time I saw you you said you were thinking of getting it cut."

The Doctor turns completely and shoves his hands in the pockets of his cargo pants. "Did I say that? Interesting…"

River realizes she has made a mistake with their timelines and her eyes widened. "Oh… is this your first time here?"

"Yup. It's a nice place, though." He looks around appreciatively. "Nice lighting, good layout and—" he inhales deeply, taking in the smells of old books, leather, sweet vanilla "—smells like you."

"Well I would hope so," River says, rolling her eyes as she walks past her desk and snatches up her diary. "I've been living here ten years. Alright, sweetie, where are you now?"

"Hmmmmm." He pulls a similar diary out of his pocket and flips to the most recent entry. "I just took _you_to the Bermount Mountain Retreat. We went skiing, drank hot chocolate, and sat in the cold and watched Aurora Borealis."

River smiles as she remembers just exactly what they did afterwards to warmup. "Alright. The last thing I did with you, the last proper timeline correct event, was…." She glances at her diary, even though she knows their timeline by heart. "Crash of the Byzantium."

The Doctor's eyes widen for a fraction of a second before he covers it with a eyebrow-meeting frown. "And how long ago was that, exactly?" River does not answer right away, instead closing her diary and setting it on her desk. She busies herself tidying the papers there, setting them in neat little stacks. After a few too-long moments he prompts her with a quiet, "….River?"

She turns to him, eyes sad, and when she speaks her voice is thick. "Byzantium was…. fifteen years ago. Give or take."

He's seen that look on her face before—when he left her at Stormcage after kissing her for the first time…her last, proper time. "Oh, River…" He walks over to her, reaching out to embrace her, and she all but falls into him. He wraps his arms around her and squeezes her comfortingly as she buries her face into the collar of his sweater. He has to loosen his grip as she takes a deep breath to inhale the scent of _him—_the musk of dust, the smell of his soap, and the faintest whiff of what smells like time itself.

"I've missed you so much…."

Her warm breath tickles his neck and he pulls back so he can look her in the eyes. They are a beautiful gray-blue, with green flecks and a ring of brown around each pupil that makes her irises look hazel. And they are old—so, so old. Not as old as his, but as he has been in the company of her younger self until quite recently, they look especially old and wise. He brushes away a stray curl that has managed to escape her ponytail before cupping her face in his hands. His thumbs brushing over her cheekbones as he stares into the eyes that show so much sadness and pain, but also so much love.

"I know you have." He whispers. "I have, too."

Then he kisses her. She kisses him back, her arms sliding between his to loop around his neck. A tear seeps from River's eye, meeting the Doctor's thumb on it's way down her cheek. He breaks the kiss to gently brush it aside. The tenderness of the moment is a tad overwhelming and other tears follow the first. The Doctor wipes each of them away, then leans in for another kiss. This one is anything but gentle, filled with the passion both of them have been holding back since he arrived. River's hand snakes under the Doctor's hat and pushes it off his head, tangling her fingers in his too-long hair. His hat falls to the hardwood floor with barely a sound.

His arms drop to encircle her waist, pulling her close to him. He realizes that this is what he's missed the most about her. The sound of a different set of double hearts beating against his own, the way she knows exactly when to part their lips so they can draw in a quick gasp before returning to the kiss, the feeling of her slim fingers in his hair, _the way she knows him_. It's never more evident to him that the younger version of that her he has been showing off to recently does not know him half as well as she does _right this very second_.

They eventually break to take proper breathes, and the Doctor is first to speak. "_I love you._"

River smiles at the whispered use of Gallifreyan, something he does only for her. She leans her forehead against his and murmurs back, "_Me too, Sweetie. Me too_."


End file.
